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Esquisse Pour Un Portrait De Max Ernst
Hans Bellmer
European Art
The soul-crushing experience of imprisonment conjured by Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s etchings is also evoked in this haunting portrait that the Surrealist photographer Hans Bellmer drew of his friend and fellow artist Max Ernst. At the time they were both prisoners at a World War II internment camp for “undesirable foreigners” housed in a brick and tile factory in the South of France. Ernst’s face is rendered in a mosaic of small bricks, alluding to the artists’ incarceration, the brick prison building, and its former product.
MEDIUM
Graphite and opaque watercolor on wove paper
DATES
1939
DIMENSIONS
4 3/8 x 5 11/16 in. (11.1 x 14.5 cm) (show scale)
SIGNATURE
Signed, "H.B." in pencil, lower right
INSCRIPTIONS
"193 Hans Bellmer" (signature) in pencil, upper left; verso; "Square up/ S.S. (192)/H.T." upper right in pencil; "Portrait of M.E. by H. Bellmer" in pencil, lower center.
Pencil sketch on verso.
COLLECTIONS
European Art
ACCESSION NUMBER
87.53
CREDIT LINE
Purchase gift of the Julian Beck Memorial Fund in memory of Julian Beck
MUSEUM LOCATION
This item is not on view
CAPTION
Hans Bellmer (German, 1902–1975). Esquisse Pour Un Portrait De Max Ernst, 1939. Graphite and opaque watercolor on wove paper, 4 3/8 x 5 11/16 in. (11.1 x 14.5 cm). Brooklyn Museum, Purchase gift of the Julian Beck Memorial Fund in memory of Julian Beck, 87.53. © artist or artist's estate (Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 87.53_bw.jpg)
IMAGE
overall, 87.53_bw.jpg. Brooklyn Museum photograph, 2013
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RIGHTS STATEMENT
© artist or artist's estate
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